Change is scary. But when we look it right in the eye, we are more open to new people and experiences:

This past Spring, our neighbor Nicole let us know that she and her family would be moving away from our community. I asked Nicole if she planned to have a goodbye gathering before she left. “Nah,” she replied, “We don’t like to make a big deal of leaving. We’ll probably pack our stuff and ‘sneak out the back door’ without too much fanfare.”

I’ve recently become aware of how much transition surrounds us. We experience the changing of the seasons. We welcome new family members or pets. We say goodbye to family members, human and otherwise. New friends come into our lives and we say goodbye to family members and friends who are leaving for faraway adventures. We start and leave jobs, we enter new decades of life.

This transition happens on the organizational level too. An organization I work with just went through a leadership transition. For those of us who were involved, it was bumpy. We made challenging decisions, absorbed heart-wrenching feedback, and held the community’s interests through moments with no easy answers.

In thinking about how to process transitions, I’m inspired by the work of William Bridges. Bridges, who wrote Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes almost 40 years ago, argues that transitions have three parts:

• Endings-characterized by denial, anxiety, confusion, anger, and fear

• The Neutral Zone-characterized by frustration, confusion, and stress as well as creativity

• New Beginnings-characterized by enthusiasm, trust, excitement, hope, anxiety, and acceptance

Bridges suggests that we’re open to beginnings only when we’ve processed the endings. There’s no shortcut. When we’re able to say goodbye to the people or experiences that we’re leaving behind and feel all of the feelings that go with that goodbye, we become open to new beginnings.

To process the leadership transition, I designed and facilitated a conversation based on Bridges’ work that would help us, as a group, to say goodbye to the ending that we had experienced. We took a few minutes to privately write about what was ending for us. Then we used Post-its to write out what we were feeling in The Neutral Zone and New Beginnings. We put the Post-its on two large sheets of paper, each representing those areas. The last step was to “tour” those large sheets of paper, read others’ responses, and discuss what we had learned.

As I stood in front of “The Neutral Zone” and “New Beginnings,” a friend asked me which one resonated more. “Well, New Beginnings” is hopeful,” I responded, “But when I look at the Neutral Zone, I feel sadness-and feel the intensity of the emotions that we’ve all experienced.”

Others agreed. Until reflecting on our experience, we hadn’t realized how much we were still feeling. The leadership change had already happened, but we needed some space to process the emotions of that transition. This conversation enabled us, as leaders, to be more open to our community’s exciting New Beginning.

Back in the neighborhood, I told my friend Nicole about William Bridges’ work and theories. I encouraged her to organize a going-away picnic to acknowledge her family’s friendships. They did! It helped all of us say goodbye and process our sadness at this ending.

I still walk by “Nicole’s house” and wish that knocking on the door would make her appear. A painful part of life is that we can’t magically knock on any door and bring back what has been lost. Yet acknowledging transition helps each of us to notice new doors waiting for us to knock on and open.

Try this: 

• Look around. What transitions are you, your community or your organization experiencing?

• What conversations, rituals or gatherings can you create to acknowledge and process those endings so that you are open to new beginnings?

• If you feel hesitation at acknowledging transition, take some time to reflect on that. How can you give yourself or your organization time and space to acknowledge transition?

Last month’s post “How to find treasures hidden in plain sight” discussed how paying attention can lead to greater awareness and utilization of your organization’s assets. It introduced the idea of foraging, or opening our minds to note things that we might regularly miss and consider what we can do with everything we do have. Read it here and hit reply to let us know what you think.